Blue Velvet
by wanweirdd
Summary: A woman accounts her life and tragic love for her husband, James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky/OC


_Prologue _

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_September, 27__th __1946_

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Jane stirred in her bed. The heat of a steamy, New York night lay thick in her room, hanging sodden and heavy about her. She had kicked off the white chenille bedspread and sheets hours earlier, her cotton nightgown now bunched up around her waist. No breeze was blowing through her open, screened window.

The moon hung low and its milky light lay supine on the floor, a dim, inadequate lantern and she awoke to the sound of her daughter's cries from the side of her bed. Jane immediately sat up, cooing softly as she lifted the one year-old, Charlotte from her crib. With infinite care the young mother put the baby to her breast after settling back into bed, the small mouth finding the nipple and greedily latching on. Jane smiled and ran a single finger down her child's cheek.

The city that evening was surprisingly quiet and calm for a Thursday. It was raining lightly, a faint, misty drizzle that hardly managed to pierce through the thick fog that clouded New York and enveloped the buildings in a tight blanket. The sky above was the color of charcoal, cloaking Brooklyn in a strange, gray-colored pall. The air was sticky and hot, and Jane's chocolate hair was limp and slightly damp around her forehead as she brushed it aside. Even though Fall was fast approaching—it was almost late September—the sweltering summer heat still tormented the city, refusing to relent its warmth.

After Charlotte had finished eating, she fell back to sleep and Jane laid down with the baby resting against her chest, looking to the empty side of her bed after she had kissed both chubby cheeks goodnight.

One word echoed through her mind.

_Bucky . . ._

Four years ago, Jane's sister had introduced her to a boy from her school, a college student named James Buchanan Barnes, nicknamed Bucky by his friends. He had a confident disposition, a quick mind, and was possibly the most handsome man Jane had ever met. He was enlisted in the Army. After their third date, Bucky had kissed Jane at front of her apartment building and from that moment forward, she was a goner, and so was he. A month later, on a Saturday night in April, Bucky asked her to be his bride.

They were married only two weeks before he was shipped out to the Italian front.

Jane sucked in a shaky breath, wiping ineffectively at the tears that began to drip down her cheeks. She felt the hole in her chest throb as she tried to swallow down the lump in her throat. When Charlotte stirred against her, she pulled the baby closer and kissed her forehead.

They had a happy marriage. Though Bucky was gone most of the time fighting over seas, him and Jane would constantly communicate through letters and would spend their every moment together when he was home. Their years together had undeniably made him her best friend and together they had grown into both themselves, and each other, with respect and tenderness. Together they had created a beautiful baby girl with his blue eyes and her small nose and had hoped to add another little one to their family when the war was over.

Jane turned to her dresser toward the photograph of her and Bucky on their wedding day. She had just turned eighteen and her young, fresh face was stretched into a wide smile. Beside her, Bucky had a strong arm around her waist with his infamous smirk on his lips.

Jane reached out a hand and ran her fingers along the frame, her pointer gliding across the side of her husband's black and white face.

_Creeeeeeeek_

Jane's head jerked at the sound of her front door opening and closing.

Sitting up, she set Charlotte back in her crib and moved toward her bedroom door, peeking around the side. There was no one there. She stepped cautiously out of her room and into the short hallway where it was darker, the air staler and weightier. Directly across from Jane's room was the bathroom, a pink-tiled room nearly half-filled with the scratched-up white claw-foot bathtub. She looked inside to find it empty.

With a small frown, she took a tentative step forward into the living room and turned on the light.

And she was grabbed.

Jane screamed, twisting to get away, but the man's gloved hand gripping the back of her neck gave her no time to react. Before she could brace herself and offer resistance, he slammed her head into the kitchen counter with a brutality that stunned her. She cried out sharply, a choked gasp tangling in her throat.

Jane's world spun. She could hear the man speaking, but his voice was a roar in her ears, like ocean waves crashing against the shore. Her vision was dotting and she felt her knees wobble.

It was when a rag covered her face that she realized what was going on. She wiggled weakly in his grip, trying to get free. But it was no use. The world was slowly darkening and she wasn't going to be able to break free.

She cried out her daughter's name in one last desperate plea before the world went completely black.

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_67 years later_

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Loud, insistent whispers were sounding in Jane's ear.

Irritated at the noise, she tried to swat it away, thinking it was a bee or some kind of fly, but when her arm didn't move at her mental command, her brows furrowed in confusion. She blinked, and it took a few moments before they could adjust to the bright lighting. Her head felt like it weighed a ton.

_Why does it feel so heavy?_ She asked herself. It felt like it had suddenly turned to lead. She groaned and rolled onto her side, lashes fluttering shut. Blindly, Jane reached over to turn on her lamp, but she was once again surprised when her arm wouldn't follow her command.

_What is going on?_ She fell back against the pillows helplessly. Whoever was in her room was just going to have to wait, because she was too tired to get up. Jane wondered what time it was then, and craned her neck to the side to check her alarm clock.

Except that it wasn't there.

_It must have fallen on the floor,_ she thought. She glanced towards her window then, eyes half lidded, and suddenly jolted at the realization that there was no window. With her heat beating a mile a minute, Jane tried to urge her body into a sitting position, but found her limbs still too weak.

Her eyes widened and her instincts kicked in when a white shape began to approach her—and yet her body refused to cooperate, doing nothing. It was like waking up from a long afternoon nap, right in between that place of being half-awake and half-asleep. Her mind was slowly but surely beginning to function again, but her body was ten seconds behind.

Looking left and right, she found her jaw dropping at the sight of her surroundings.

This wasn't her room.

Charlotte's crib wasn't beside her.

Instead Jane was surrounded by white walls and a ceiling from which a white fan was spinning around and around and around above her. In the far corner was a brown desk that decorated by a vase of flowers, and a shiny radio that was playing soft jazz. Along the wall, to the right, was a door with a gold nob.

Jane continued to look around frantically for her child's crib. "Charlotte?" she managed to slur. Her tongue was so heavy it felt like it had been pinned down and her throat had grown uncomfortably dry.

"Good morning, Ms. Barnes."

Jane turned, eyes landing on a tall, pretty brunette standing beside her bed. She had a soft smile stretched over her red lips and wore a nursing uniform.

"Where's my baby?" She immediately questioned, trying to sit up.

"Ma'am, please stay still. You're going to hurt yourself."

Jane swallowed as her heart thudded against her chest. It was so loud she thought that even the woman could hear it. "Where's my child?" she asked again, overwhelmed. It was all a shock to her, and she was still trying to process what exactly was happening. Her brain just couldn't seem to catch up and always felt two steps behind. "Where's my Charlotte?"

"Please, calm down so I can explain." The nurse murmured. She pulled a chair up beside her bed and sat down, gracefully crossing her legs. "You're in a recovery room." She paused for a moment, staring into Jane's eyes with something akin to poorly concealed pity. "You've been asleep for a very long time."

"Is Charlotte alright? Where is she?"

"Ms. Barnes, what's the last thing you remember?" the woman asked, watching her closely.

"I-I woke up during the night to Charlotte fussing. And I was, it was really hot and she was hungry, so I fed her and then put her back to bed." She sighed heavily. Her skull was pounding, her body was stiff and her brain felt like a toxic wasteland courtesy of the surely illegal levels of trepidation and adrenaline that had been sprinting through her veins. "What's going on?"

"Ms. Barnes . . ." The nurse's expression was eerily sober, "You've been asleep for a very long time." She murmured again.

". . . How long?"

"Almost seventy years."

"W-What?" Jane gasped, half-laughing in disbelief. Her eyes fluttered over the woman's face but was horrified to find it completely serious.

_She was serious._

"I'm sorry, Ms. Barnes."

Jane squeezed her eyes shut and for several minutes she could only sit there, listening to her heart beating frantically in her breast. She struggled to gather the strands of sense and restring the million pieces of herself that had scattered away like so many pearls of a broken necklace. She felt like a clumsy child, scrabbling to gather them up from where they rolled haphazardly about on the floor. Finally letting the words process, with a deep resetting breath, Jane opened her eyes again and stared at the white bedding.

"N-No. No, you're lying," she mumbled senselessly without looking up. She jerkily stumbled out of the bed and began toward the brown door, "Charlotte's probably wondering where I am, I-I need to see her. We were going to go on a walk with my sister t-today and, and we can't be—," Jane tripped on the rug in the middle of the room and caught herself on the armrest of a nearby seat.

"Please, Ms. Barnes—you aren't in a stable condition." The nurse stated when she caught up with her, setting a gentle hand on the young woman's back. "Come lay back down in the bed."

At the touch, Jane's shoulders immediately deflated and she hung her head miserably. Her breath was racing like she had just sprinted a mile. "Please, _please_ tell me this is some sort of joke," she whimpered, "_Please_."

The nurse was silent.

Jane cried, then, tears stumbling over her cheeks as she sobbed open-mouthed onto her hands. It hurt to think. The thoughts were unbearable and continued to increase in decibel. Her head pounded like a thousand drums, a grisly chorus of excruciating sounds.

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